


Her Eyes Had Been Green

by LananiA3O



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Child Death, Death by burning, Gen, Graphic Violence, Graphic deaths, Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, death by blunt force trauma, death by chemical poisoning, lots of guilt and self-blame, memory recovery, multiple OC deaths, pre civil war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 15:11:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11466180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: After saving Captain America from death by drowning, Bucky goes into hiding trying to recover the memories that were stolen from him by Hydra, but for a man who has been used as a living, breathing weapon for seventy years, not every memory is pleasant. Especially when they concern the people he had been sent to kill.





	Her Eyes Had Been Green

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING: Please read the tags! For the love of god, read the tags! If you feel like you'll be uncomfortable with anything that's listed there, please hit backspace now. I mean it. This work is DARK. Thanks.**
> 
> NOTES:  
> So I finally saw Captain America: Civil War last week, and this idea has been keeping a hold of me ever since: what must it have been like for Bucky to start regaining his memories, to suddenly remember all those people he murdered? Well, this is the result. Hopefully, now that I have exorcized this from my brain, I can get some sleep.

It started out the same way most of his nights did: with Bucky staring at his bed, at the rumpled sheets and the stained pillow, wondering whether he should really do this to himself.

On one hand, his body needed sleep. Bucky was no idiot. He could run for hours, punch through steel, take on a whole battalion by himself, and he nearly killed Captain America. Even so, his body needed rest every now and then, and the dull aching that was starting at the base of his metal arm, slowly spreading throughout the rest of his body like tendrils of spilled oil on water, was a clear sign that now was one of those times.

On the other hand, his sleep hardly ever felt like “rest”. Physically, he was usually fine. It had to be a really, really bad night to have him wake up more hurting, more tired in the morning than before, but mentally? Emotionally? Bucky shook his head. The fingers of his metal arm clenched. He shouldn’t be thinking about this. A good _soldat_ does not think. A good _soldat_ does not feel.

He was no longer a good _soldat_ , though, and that was part of a problem. He had stopped being a good _soldat_ the moment he had dragged Captain America out of the water, the instant he had decided not to return to his Hydra masters.

Sometimes that was what gave him nightmares: the idea that they would come for him, to take him away, to punish him. They had tried already. They had been trying ever since he had started to run. From Hydra. From SHIELD. From Captain America. From the Winter Soldier. Twice they had caught up with him. Twice they had ended up all but dead. He remembered.

It wasn’t what he wanted to remember, but at least he did remember _something_.

Bucky winced as he shrugged out of his boots and jacket. Remembering still... hurt. Not the “oh, in my heart it pains me so” kind of hurt, but actual, physical agony, like a headache that was just strong enough to be noticeable and annoying, but not strong enough to make him reach for the painkillers. He didn’t know a lot about a lot, but he was convinced that if his mind were half as fit as his body, he wouldn’t be in this damn mess. With a deep sigh, Bucky slipped under the covers.

The sheets still smelled of tobacco, as did most things in this rat’s hole he had rented. He had washed them six times by now, but the stench persisted. The pillow was worn out, the casing itchy and splattered. Some of it was blood. Some of it was tears. Some were his own. He had given up on washing them out. They’d be back the next time he woke up.

That was where the real problem was.

On one hand, when Bucky slept, he usually dreamed, and rarely were his dreams anything good or nice. Some nights he wondered whether other people had dreams like his, or whether everyone else was just a lot luckier, because his dreams usually were a jumbled and confusing mess of painful images, grating sounds, and a messed up timeline. They didn’t start at the beginning. They didn’t finish at the end. They were blips and pieces from undefined days, and half the time he didn’t even remember most of what little he got after he woke up. It all faded so quickly... Ironically, that was actually the only constant thing about his nights: the utter feeling of... loss... every time he woke up. Like he had had something in his grasp for a minute, but now it was already gone and slithering away.

On the other hand, when Bucky slept, he usually dreamed, and as disturbing as the entire process was, it was also where most of his memories came from. There was a chance, of course, that they were not actually memories, but Bucky doubted that. They felt real. They made sense, in a sort of grotesque way. And no matter how terrible they were, no matter how fragmented and puzzling, they  were his memories. He had memories. He actually remembered.

Weapons don’t remember. Machines don’t remember. Tools don’t remember.

Men do.

As long as he had the dreams, Bucky was not a weapon. Not a machine. Not a tool.

A man.

***

It was hot. Hot and sticky. Humid. The sweat clung to the seams where his prosthesis connected to his actual flesh and it felt hot. It burned into his skin.

The Winter Soldier ignored it. He stuck to the shadows, away from the lanterns, waiting for his opening. There were two guards on duty by the gate, bored to death and tired from a long night shift by the looks of it. He checked his watch. Twenty-eight minutes until sunrise. Twenty-eight minutes to finish his mission. Two minutes until the pair of patrolling guards would come by. Another minute until they would leave. The Soldier waited.

Winter was patient.

***

“Four targets,” the man in front of him said as he threw the file on the table.

The Winter Soldier picked it up and looked at the pictures, studying every angle, every imperfection in the four faces in front of him. He never took his files with him. It was standard protocol. In case of capture, no one would know who he was or why he had been where he had been. They could torture him, but he would not talk. And he would have no evidence on his person. That was why he needed to memorize them.

The man lit his pipe and started belching out silver-blue smoke. He looked uncertain. Almost... nervous... Not like the usual handlers.

The Winter Soldier did not flinch, but he felt the stab nonetheless. What ‘usual handlers’? He was getting distracted. Not good. A good weapon does not get distracted.

“Do not kill the man,” the nervous man said with one last nod in the Soldier’s general direction. “We need him alive. We need him filled with grief and hate. Make sure he sees it all. And make sure you wear the colors.”

***

The woman, target 2, screamed, a grating, high-pitched sound that should have roused the guards and triggered the alarms, had there been guards left to rouse and any alarms left to trigger. She ran for the door. The Winter Soldier grabbed a chair from the nearby table and threw it at her calves. It shattered and splintered. Two stakes through the left foot. One through the right. She was bleeding badly. She was still screaming.

The man, target 1, shouted a name. Names were meaningless to the Soldier. Target 1 was not. He grabbed him by his broken left ankle and started dragging him out of the bedroom and down the stairs. Into the living room. His equally broken arms and right leg hung uselessly by his side. Small whispers came from the dark, mingling with the target 2’s groans and cries.

He strung target 1 up on the fireplace, arms fixed to the swords on display above the hearth using a rope he had brought.

Target 1 kept screaming for the guards. The Winter Soldier went back for target 2. Nineteen minutes to go.

***

It was not gray. The Winter Soldier shrugged out of his cryo sleep attire and into the clothes they had provided to him.

Usually they dressed him in dark gray. Gray was good. It blended with almost everything. It concealed. It did not evoke strong feelings. It did not draw attention. It did not belong to anything or anyone. Except a ghost. Except the Winter Soldier.

This time it was not gray.  It was red, yellow and green.

Green was good, where he was going. There was going to be lots of jungle. Green would conceal him nicely.

Yellow was not good. Yellow stood out. Yellow drew attention. Yet somehow, this is what his commanders wanted. They wanted him to stand out. They wanted him to draw attention. The emblem embroidered on the yellow sash ensured that no one would forget where he had come from. Where his commander wanted them to believe he was coming from.

Red... His fingers lingered on the jacket for just a second. Red was good. Red hid blood. He could work with red.

***

The boy, target 3, was still trying to fight when the Winter Soldier dragged him downstairs into the living room, to join target 1 and 2. He kept on yelling curses in Spanish. _Coño. Pendejo. Cabrón. Hijo de puta. Maricón_. They bounced off the Winter Soldier like bullets off his metal arm.

He tied him to the coffee table in the middle of the room. In front of target 1, fixed to the fireplace, and in front of target 2, bound to the arm chair with the same rope. For target 3, he used the barb wire he had been given. It dug into the flesh of his elbows and knees and drew screams before the Winter Soldier had even started his work.

The Soldier left him there and went into the laundry room downstairs. He did not hurry. Everyone who was of any threat was either dead or restrained.

He returned with a gallon-sized bottle of drain cleaner, forced target 3’s mouth open and started pouring. He clamped his mouth shut and waited as the chemical reaction started to take its turn and the screams began. Sixteen minutes to go.

***

The first guard to fall was the one to the right of the gate. He was dead in an instant. The second guard, followed right after. Their eyes stared vacantly into nothingness.

The Winter Soldier had begun the second phase of his task.

He worked methodically, following the patrol route, stalking them as they took him all across the grounds of the villa, eradicating all stationary patrols along the way with quick snaps of necks. Only once they had circled around to the front of the villa once more and the two guards saw their dead colleagues by the entrance, did they realize what had happened.

The Winter Soldier grabbed both their heads and ground them into the nearest wall. The one in his left hand was dead in an instant. The one in his right was not. He twisted his neck and wiped the blood off on his red jacket. Twenty minutes to go.

***

“Mission report.”

“August 24th, 1979. Mission complete.” The Winter Soldier stared at the wall on the other side of the room. To his left, someone was burning his clothes, the last evidence of his deeds. “Targets 2, 3 and 4 neutralized. Targets 1 observed neutralization. Target 1 remains alive.”

“Did you use the salute?”

“Affirmative.” He did not really remember, but he was sure that he had followed orders. “Employed salute and parole as instructed. Message delivered as specified. Mission completed two minutes ahead of specified deadline.”

“Good.” His commander smiled. His commander was happy.

The Winter Soldier felt nothing.

The commander patted his shoulder. “You did good work tonight, soldier.” He turned to one of the men in the white coats. “Wipe him and freeze him. Hail Hydra!”

***

“Pablo! Pablo!”

Target 2’s voice was annoyingly loud. The Winter Soldier ignored her. He left her and target 1 in the living room, crying over neutralized target 3 on the coffee table. He still had to get target 4.

The room was colored pink. The bed was dressed in silk and satin. The floor was covered in fluffy toys. Unicorns. Puppies. Kittens. He opened a closet that matched him in size and tore out its innards with one swift strike. Negative.

The bed sheets were next. He ripped them off the mattress, then ripped the mattress off the springs. Negative.

The Winter Soldier started working his way through the room, tearing the place apart inch by inch. Negative.

He moved on to the bathroom. Negative.

He found her in the bedroom of targets 1 and 2, hiding under the blood-soiled mattress, screaming as he pulled her from her safe zone. Twelve minutes to go.

***

Target 1 was crying. He was no longer coherent. His Spanish had deteriorated into a jumbled mess of agonized sobs and howls. Somewhere in the garbled mess that had once been a language, one word stood out, barely understandable: ¿porqué?

_Why._

The Winter Soldier looked at his work. Target 2, 3 and 4 had been neutralized violently and bloodily, as requested. There was only one thing left to do.

He wrote the phrase on the hallway wall in the blood of target 4 in two-foot high letters, then turned around and faced target 1. The Winter Soldier saluted and said the words. Then he left.

Two minutes to sunrise. His mission was complete. His commander would be pleased.

***

Target 2, screamed as her flesh melted away under a cloak of burning gasoline. The stench was nauseating, but the Winter Soldier did not flinch. A good _soldat_ did not flinch.

Target 1, screamed with her. Target 4 wailed and struggled in his grasp, as if she could save target 2, if only she could slip from his metal fingers.

The Winter Soldier did not move until target 2 had been neutralized. The flames were still moving. She was not.

Eight minutes to go.

***

“Por favor...” The man was talking through clenched teeth and welling tears. “Por favor... ¡Deje a mi hija! ¡Déjela, por favor... por favor... solo tiene siete años. Por favor...”

The Winter Soldier looked at target 1, then at target 4.

The girl.

Target 4 had stopped crying. Target 4 had stopped struggling. Target 4 had stopped screaming.

Target 4 was looking straight at him.

Her eyes were green.

Not the vibrant, saturated green of the little dinosaur toy in her tiny hands. Not the dark, primal green of the plants throughout the living room.

It was the soft, muted olive green of his own pants, his own uniform for this assignment. It was a peaceful green, a steady green. A harmless green.

Target 4 was not afraid. Target 4 was not upset. Target 4 was not angry. It made no sense.

_Target 4 is to be neutralized._

He used the metal arm. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Her ribs cracked like eggs, her arms and legs snapped like twigs.

Target 1 cried. Target 1 screamed.

Target 4 did not cry. Target 4 did not scream. Target 4 looked at the Winter Soldier with peaceful green eyes, as if to dare him to forget her.

He planted the last strike in her face, destroying what was left of target 4. Destroying the obnoxious green.

Three minutes to go.

***

Bucky woke not with a jolt, but with the slow, gradual awareness of someone who had just woken up from being sedated, of someone whose mind was not yet fully in place. His left arm felt heavy, his right arm felt dead, which was strange since it was the left one he was laying on, not the right. He tried to breathe in and coughed hard as the smell of stale, chilled, smoke-riddled air got sucked from the pillow under his head.

The pillow was wet and cold. His eyes felt dry and hot. He knew what that meant.

It had been a bad one. A really, really bad one.

Slowly, Bucky’s surroundings shifted into focus. The wall next to his bed. The broken lamp above it. He rolled over, groaning as his battered body protested at the movement and reached out for the notebook and pen on the bedside table with clumsy, sleep-heavy fingers.

He had to hurry. Already the dream was fading from his mind. Things that had seemed clear only a moment ago, when his body had still been paralyzed by the last tendrils of sleep were starting to blur.

There had been a date... August... 25th? 24th? Something like that. 197—nineteen-seventy-something. He rifled through the markers quickly, frantically, chasing the last bits of memory that hung on for dear life inside his aching skull. There was no marker from the 1970s yet. This was new.

He flipped to the first empty page he could find and started writing.

 _Four._ It had been something with the number four. _Hot. Night. Lots of guards. Nameless faces. Nameless backs with snapped necks on top of them. A fireplace. A man screaming. Spanish. A woman in flames._

He tried to recall her dress, her hair, but nothing came up. He didn’t try to recall her name. He had given up on names long ago. Names never stuck.

_There had been a boy. Screaming. Dying._

That was all he recalled about him, and Bucky hated himself for it. He didn’t know their names. He didn’t know why he had killed them, but he _had_ killed them and now this was all he would remember? Only this... It was like a cruel joke, a final insult to the people he had murdered at Hydra’s bidding.

_A girl. Seven. Green dinosaur._

The rest of the dream was steadily fading, sliding into the obscurity of distant memory, yet somehow this image remained. For a moment, Bucky felt something that he couldn’t recall feeling in a long time. Hope. Hope that maybe something was finally going to stick. Hope that maybe this one he would remember.

He started drawing. Bucky had never drawn before, yet here he was, poorly sketching a human face. He didn’t think. He didn’t stop. His fingers kept moving until they were not. When he was done, Bucky pushed apart the blinds of the window above his bed and held the picture up into the light.

Had she been blonde? Brunette? He couldn’t remember. Had she been crying? Screaming? He couldn’t recall. His sketch was a mess that looked barely human. For a moment, the usual emptiness that tended to settle in him after the nightmare had cleared completely, wiped from his mind either by some stupid part of his brain like a good _soldat_ washing his hands off the blood he had spilled, or by Hydra’s twisted warping of his mind.

Then it hit him.

Her eyes had been green.

Her eyes had been green as she had watched her mother burn.

Her eyes had been green as her father had begged for her life.

Her eyes had been green as he had raised his metal arm.

Her eyes had been green as he had smashed her limbs into a pulp.

Her eyes had been green, as he had broken her face.

Bucky ditched the book and vaulted off the bed just in time to reach the sink to throw up in. He tasted acid in his throat.

He remembered.

He remembered, and now that he remembered, he could not forget.

With a deep sigh, Bucky rinsed off his face and went to retrieve his notebook. Every second it took the damn thing to boot felt like an eternity, but he had to know. He started with the keywords ‘América del Sur’, because even though the language had been Spanish, _something_ inside him knew that it had not been Spain, ‘1970’, because he had to start somewhere, ‘familia’ and ‘asesinado’.

It took him fifty-eight minutes and fourteen seconds of shuffling search words and browsing results, but eventually he found her.

The girl in the picture smiled brightly, a toothy grin in a face with dark freckles, framed by soft, mahogany hair. Bucky clasped his metal hand over his mouth and swallowed hard as the tears started to push to the surface.

She had been real. She had been alive. Until the Winter Soldier had been sent for her and her family, Emilia Mendoza Solos had been real and alive.

And, _dear God_...  he remembered correctly.

Her eyes had been green.


End file.
